Moments are important. The moment you become a person, the moment you marry, the moment you conceive a child, the moment you die: these moments are not playthings for us to dismiss and engineer as we see fit. These moments are reality-shifting, and when they are seen for what they are, there is life in abundance. Anywhere where there is a promise of life, there is a battleground.
Many of us are feeling restricted these days. More than ever, we need to understand the power we have right here in this moment. Maybe you aren’t allowed in restaurants anymore. Maybe your kids can’t dance because the government has decided that you are a threat to national security. No matter. If you can’t go to Mexico, bring Mexico into your soul. If you can’t spread yourself out, dig yourself in deeper.
It takes a magnanimous person to open their arms wide and say: “I accept it all!” And yet, this is life in the Spirit. “Be it done unto me!” Life in the Spirit is lived in the absence of fear and timidity. Life in the Spirit means fleeing in haste to the hill country with Jesus or staying put and staying awake to suffer with Jesus, depending on the day.
Life in the Spirit is not merely allowing ourselves to be vulnerable; life in the Spirit is the realization that we are always vulnerable. Nothing is safe. We are going to die. Things will most definitely not go the way we planned.
Time is terrifying. It offers us endless opportunities, and it makes room for many blessings but also many heartbreaking tragedies. Running headlong at life and love makes us scared. We don’t want to get hurt. We would rather hide out in our homes for years than take any risks. Online is much safer than a raw relationship, in so many ways.
God speaks to the power of the raw relationship in the reality of confession. Catholic theology teaches us that each time a person celebrates the sacrament of reconciliation, their soul becomes progressively more divine and has a greater capacity for God. In a word, the soul expands because that person showed their wounds to a priest. People often consider confession to be a “restore-to-factory-settings” kind of operation, but it is literally infinitely more than this. The grace that pours into a receptive soul at the moment of absolution is a wonder.
Jesus shows us how to walk in the power of the Spirit. When he meets Nicodemus (the curious Pharisee in the middle of the night), he tells him what it is to be born of the Spirit. The wind “blows where it wishes. You hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it is going.”
When we are people of prayer, we become people of the Spirit. We can feel a propelling backwind guiding us into action and directing our steps. Instead of dwelling in self-pity and mindless efforts at distracting ourselves from pain, we can embrace our pain and let it catapult us forward into interior freedom and abundance.
In the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary, Christ reveals the kingdom in a series of bold moments. One moment, there are jugs of water. The next moment, there is wine. One moment, there is a shabby travelling Jesus on the mountain. The next moment, he is accompanied by Moses and Elijah, is bathed in light, and is wearing clothes “whiter than anyone on earth could bleach them.” One moment, he holds plain old bread in his sacred hands. The next moment, he institutes the source and summit of our faith, the Eucharist.
Where Christ is, he leaves nothing as he found it.
In our highly depressed culture, we spend a lot of time being aimless. Scrolling, texting about nothing, watching shows about nothing. We don’t know where to spend our energy. We don’t know how to have meaningful conversations. We don’t know the power of a small moment. We don’t understand that when we are called home at the end of our lives, we have only an accumulation of tiny moments, hopefully fully embraced.
If we are able to suffer well when we suffer and also celebrate well, we will know how to live well. We will then find ourselves well equipped with hope and joy in the moments of our final sufferings. We’ve built the skill painstakingly and quietly throughout our lives. As the tiny moments go, so go our lives.